Fat Lady Much?

So, it's all over. HUGE FRICKEN SIGH!!!

I graduated (magna cum laude, and departmental honors mofos!) last Saturday, and am now drifting aimlessly in the world.

I figure i'd try and get a job in my chosen career, and eventually (like in 10 years or so) come back to grad school and get a masters in library science, and eventually a doctorate in something or other. My largest problem about gradual school (as Robin Williams said in Life According to Garp, it's where students go to gradually realize they don't want to be in college anymore) is that i have no idea what i'd be focused on. I like English, but i don't want to get a doctorate in teaching or any specific area. Not to mention the idea of a dissertation makes me want to run away screaming.

My honors thesis ended up at a solid 35 pages, 40 with work cited. I still need to put in a source (yeah, imagine my horror during the defense when I was asked about a source that was not in the freaking works cited page) and restructure the introduction a bit to show how it ended up changing, but it's purty good.

I'm done at Big City Magazine, and managed to end up with a byline in the latest issue (suweet!).

And oh yeah, i'm done with school!!!!!...!!!. (that punctuation sums up my feelings pretty accurately). I got my grades back and it turns out i managed to break my annual spring slump, rounding out BOTH semesters at my university with 4.0 scores. yeah, i'm badass.

Coffee House is working out ok, but I really need to get a career type job soon if i'm going to continue to afford my apartment. Yeah, i have an apartment, and not with Crazy Lady, Friends to Horses, or Once and Future Roommate. It's with someone I found on Craigslist, Law Student. She seems nice so far, but we'll see, I guess.

Well, that's my life in a nutshell. What's up with you?

Article assignation

okay, so this has nothing to do with an assignation. but it sounded cool.

Just got an article punted to me by Boss Lady - she wants to make sure i get a byline in my time at Magazine. Ironically, i then got hit up by Other Magazine Boss Lady to help her out with her spotlight feature for Other Magazine, so i'm going to get a shared byline there as well.

The article will be a before/after deal about this pool out in Suburbia that has been pretty radically awesome-ified. To start off with, i called the landscaper, terrified that i'd screw up a phone interview (as previously noted, i suck at phone conversations). I did all this pre-call stuff, making sure i understood what had changed, figuring out what i'd need to know, writing little reminders of what to check (name spelling, comp list address- the comp list being the Mailing List from Hell that apparently is done every issue), getting the resource info from the landscaper's website, and generally psyching myself up.

of course, then the call went to voice mail and i freaked out. I managed to get my message across (i hope) and left my cell number, but now i'm worried he'll call back either during my one class of the day (yay choir!) or sometime tomorrow, when i won't be interning and will in fact be doing that whole "graduating" academic thing.

so yay for worry.

Short and angsty

Last post of boring crap, i promise.

Yesterday  (as in the 18th, not actually yesterday) i had no work to do for my magazine 'cause we were waiting on printers, so Boss Lady lent me out to Assistant Boss Lady. Assistant Boss Lady is head editor of Other Magazine. I had to call oodles of people i didn't know, but i got the assistance of an aunt of mine who works as a clerk. It was a long day of crapola. i don't want to do this forever. the end.

Things I've learned as an intern - so far

1. How to ask people who aren't my boss how to do what my boss has told me to do.
2. How to read Boss Lady's mind (this is more of an upgrade of my previous skill: How to read my conductor's mind)
3. How to anticipate problems that the Boss Lady hasn't thought of yet (see previous parenthesis)
4. How to use the cool stamp maker thing for postage
5. How to make labels in Excel/Word
6. How to find things to do once i've finished my "big project" - which usually takes all of 10 minutes
7. How to talk to complete strangers and incite enough pity at my horrible phone business skills to become overly helpful and, in fact, engender the help of my coworkers who can hear my horrific attempts from their offices.
8. How to over use post-its. love the post-its.

Snow my god!

It's snowing. In our state. in our portion of our state. this is not a frequent event. Actually, it's sticking as i watch, which leads me to believe in global warming (apparently, it's not just for heat anymore!). So, seeing as how i don't particularly want to read over my linguistics stuff (even though i love it), and hell has apparently frozen over (see beginning statement), i thought i'd take the opportunity to update my rather lame blog.

An Update in which Capitalization is Arbitrary

When I walked into the office this morning at Big City Magazine, my boss (the editor) wasn't in, so i decided to do the young go-getter trawling for work thing (but with less hooker overtones). I went and talked to Ad Lady, who is Boss Lady's bud in the magazine and much more organized. She set me up with some advert busy work involving reminding a list of clients that our deadline for production is this Friday. I was grooving along, calling random strangers and struggling to keep my verbal stalls to a minimum, when Boss Lady walks in late to an Important Lunch Meeting that AL and BL both need to attend. BL tells AL that i'm doing work for her (i'm on my last name at this point) and they head out the door.

So now, I have nothing to do because Boss Lady is one of those fabulously creative tragically disorganized people, and she left me with nothing to do. I'm about to go ask Editor Lady of Affiliated Magazine if she needs anything done, but first i thought i'd do a post so i wouldn't forget too much stuff for my end of term intern project (what i actually get graded on by the university).